Exactly a week ago today, you would have found me in New Orleans with a colleague at an oyster bar on the banks of the Mississippi, discussing the Dunning-Kruger effect. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, it’s pretty simple. Basically, the...
Not too long ago, I found myself at an arbitration in which one of the parties, John Doe, was attending by WhatsApp from across the globe. That was a first for me. I have already used Google Hangouts, Skype, and straight phone calls, and each...
I kind of feel like my fall should be entitled, Conference Interpreting: The Final Frontier. Because (that’s right, drum roll!) on September 10th, I begin classes at Glendon College, York University, for the Master’s in Conference Interpreting (MCI) program. The start of my classes will mark...
- by Gio Lester (c) 2012 We are Communicators. As translators, interpreters and multicultural individuals we delight in acquiring knowledge as much as in sharing it. And what we do with our knowledge is exactly what this article is about. Our knowledge base consists of cultural and...
I remember it well. I had just begun my interpreting career, and I was placed with a more experienced interpreter to provide services for a competency hearing. I had been interpreting simultaneously for a while, and now it was my partner’s turn. She switched to...
Planning is fun. Then, life happens I had planned on writing about my experience in the Southern District of Texas, McAllen Division, interpreting for the “tsunami” of misdemeanor illegal entry cases, maybe comparing it to my experience in the District of Puerto Rico interpreting for the...
[vc_row][vc_column width='2/3']This was real life. There was no do-over. My identity crisis started almost exactly two years ago when I left my job as a staff interpreter in New Jersey and headed into the Great Unknown (Montreal, Canada, to be exact). My plan was to work on...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-Courts-AdministrativeOffice-Seal.svg The Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO) is an administrative agency that is the central support entity for the judicial branch providing a wide range of administrative, legal, financial, management, program, and information technology services to the federal courts. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/administrative_office_of_the_united_states_courts When I became a...
This week it was my turn to post on the NAJIT blog, and I asked some of my colleagues what I should write about. I was told, “Don’t teach. Tell your story.” So here it is. U.N., here I come. I graduated Rutgers in the spring of...
Have you ever given thought to your public speaking skills? Whether your answer is yes or no, we republished a piece that will have you thinking about it. And, who knows, taking action. Besides being an interpreter and a translator for over 20 years, I have...